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Hi @Ksenija
This is so common, in my case my fears were around work and my ability to cope with extra responsibility when tired. It took me a few years of struggle to work out that the fears would go away if I stopped feeding them! Of course that’s easier said than done – and it’s so hard to try _not_ to do something!
So I think it’s really important to remember that when we gradually replace our negative thoughts with positive ones, the subconscious will respond, even if we doubt the positive messages.Great to hear @Tlusebrink, sounds like you’ve found the right path 🙂
Interesting to hear your rollercoaster analogy, it’s very true there will be ups and downs with every recovery path. The key is to remember the down parts are ok too, and to simply stay positive and allow the way up to come back naturally.
Hi @Liliana
I realised my negative thought patterns had trained my subconscious to keep me awake, dragging me into a spiral of anxiety. I worked on replacing these negative thoughts with positive ones about sleep (even if I didn’t believe them – it didn’t matter, the subconscious responds to the repetition, and does not register what the conscious mind believes to be ‘true’ about the situation)
Probably the most useful thing I did was to buy a lovely blank writing book and fill it was a page an evening of positive sleep affirmations (in the present tense)). I only needed to fill about a dozen pages of this before before my sleep was improving enough that I didn’t need to do this anymore.
During the day, I worked on catching negative sleep thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. Try this. Don’t worry if it feels ‘not true’, we make our own worlds.
I’m sure your sleep will improve 🙂
Hi @SleepWorry
I’ve written a couple of others posts since this one, I hope you can find them.
I checked the notebook I bought to write down positive affirmations, and I’ve filled about 12 pages. I saw progress after maybe a week, and it seems I felt I didn’t need to write in the book anymore after a couple of weeks.
How long it takes you to return to normal sleep will depend on how quickly you can get used to only thinking and saying positive things about sleep (e.g. when you get out of bed and think ‘I only slept 4 hours last night’, flip that thought into ‘I slept well for 4 hours last night, that could have been worse! And I got to lie down for a whole 8, and I felt slightly less anxious than…’) These can be all lies that you don’t believe at first, it doesn’t matter, the subconscious will respond to the repetition. As you’ve probably worked out by now it doesn’t respond to logical arguments! Once you get used to this habit, it becomes more natural, and the positive sleep stories become your reality. You relax, and then can sleep 🙂
One more thing, I hope you don’t mind me mentioning, if you can, change your name from @SleepWorry to something neutral or positive – every little helps!
Best of luck 🙂
Hi @Manfred , I said them at various times during the day, often to replace some negative sleep thought that popped in, but also when going for a walk, or in the bath. I also spent 10 mins repeating them gently during mindfulness. I also wrote them (and various other positive affirmations) down in a specially-bought notepad. I’ve just checked it and I filled out 12 pages in total, writing a page of them most days. I also bought a special pen 🙂 I think this helped.
Usually I said them in my head, but maybe occasionally quietly to myself.I coped by putting on a brave face at work and with friends, but suffering underneath. Only my wife knew the truth; constantly exhausted, emotional, pretty much a mess.
I noticed a sentence you wrote “…I now think that I will never overcome this…”. This is simply a story you tell yourself, there’s no inherent truth to it. You can change this story.
Hope you get back to good health soon
These posts are so familiar to me. I went through the same thing for 3 years, up until a year ago. As you’ve both said, the problem is anxiety caused by the very fear of not sleeping.
You need to train your subconscious to allow you to sleep. As you may have noticed, it doesn’t respond to logical arguments 🙂 … it does however respond to repetition. If you can keep telling yourself how great a sleeper you are (even if you think it’s nonsense) the subconscious will get the message. Of course it’s better if you can actually put a positive spin on things (e.g. wow great, I got 4 whole hours sleep last night, that’s better than so and so), but you don’t have to – you can just write down positive sleep statements in a book.
Sleep restriction will only help you if you believe it’s going to help you. Good luck.
FYI, these were my five mantras that ‘cured’ me. I still use them now for when I get a bad night’s sleep (everyone gets one of those now and again!)
– I am a great sleeper
– I’ve been sleeping really well
– I cope really well with little sleep
– I don’t care if I get a bad night’s sleep
– I don’t have to do anything! (for me, this meant getting out of bed at night when awake, this was a revelation when I realised I could stop bothering with this)Hi @whitelori
Thanks for you previous message by the way, looks like we have both helped each other, which is just what these forums are for I suppose 🙂
I know exactly how you feel about SR. SR is one tool in the suite of CBT techniques to help return to normal sleep, have a read of the below study around core beliefs, I’ve found this really helpful and have started to reframe an unhelpful core belief from ‘I can’t function at work without sleep’ to ‘I actually get by pretty well even with hardly any sleep’ (or something like that 🙂 )
https://www.med.upenn.edu/cbti/assets/user-content/documents/Morin_CognitiveTherapyforDysfunctionalBeliefsaboutSleepandInsomnia_BTSD.pdfHi @whitelori, thanks for your reply
When it worked last year, there were a number of factors. I had just started, for the first time in my life, going to the gym every morning (30 mins on the x-trainer), I’d started to meditate and do stimulus control (so get out of bed and meditate for 30 mins if I hadn’t slept for around 20 mins). But most importantly, I had just realised that insomnia was ‘all in my head’ so to speak, and had nothing to do with passionflower tea, herbal baths, or any other nonsense. This realisation was a bit of a lightbulb moment, and I suddenly had confidence that I would regain my ‘sleep power’. I was calm and relaxed and simply got on with it. I honestly wouldn’t have remembered how long it took to get back to normal (I had thought it was only a week) but I kept a sleep diary and when I checked it took 4 weeks in total, with the first week having a 5 nights of SC, the second 2, and the 3rd and 4th just one.
When I had a bit of a meltdown before writing the previous post, my wife told me to stop being so strict and just relax and sleep when I can (she doesn’t approve of sleep restriction, nor does she know a thing about insomnia 😀 ) . She had a point – the stress around sleep restriction was making it worse. So for the last few nights I’ve been far more relaxed, and have slept better – I can fall asleep easily just like I’ve always been able to do, and I have had fewer stops in the night, and on one occasion have been woken by my 5 o’clock alarm (I’ve decided to keep that wake up time coz I kinda like having that extra time in the morning – I’m in the gym by 6).
One key sentence stood out in your reply “… I get very upset”. The stress that being upset causes will be more likely to keep you awake. I’m starting to realise that it’s mainly our relationship with sleep that is the problem, it’s a very curious catch 22 situation where if we weren’t stressed we’d sleep better, but then if we could sleep better we wouldn’t be stressed.
One more point I’ve realised recently; my expectations of sleep have been wonky as i’ve aged – as we get older we need less sleep, yet for a long time I was pressuring myself to get the same amount of sleep I got when I was 10 years younger. It’s just not realistic, and probably a key reason why insomnia tends to affect proportionally more older people.Hi! My situation is very similar to yours (see a post I just made) – I’m 6 days in and also wondering if it’s going to work for me.
If you’re feeling anxious before bedtimes maybe try some new things to wind down. I’m not sure what works for you but I’m doing a fair bit of meditation and it helps. You could also read something relaxing, soothing music, warm milk etc. Basically, the ‘wired’ feeling is something you can control, you just need to work out the environment you need to prepare for yourself to help you. Always try to keep thoughts positive and if you notice any negative ones, just try to watch them and not identify with them. Good luck, hope you get a better sleep tonight.
